Software products must be flexible to adapt to the needs of users, and software products developed in one country must be modified and translated to be used by users in other countries. Internationalization is the process of removing language dependencies from software applications, whereas localization is the process of reinserting a specific set of values for the language attributes removed during internationalization.
A logging system is a portion of a larger software application that includes a client program and a logging interface that writes messages, such as errors or warnings, to a log. The logging interface, which accepts strings directly from a programming code, is hereinafter referred to as a raw logging interface. Since a user of a system may be from any country, speaking languages other than English, the messages that are intended for the user (e.g. errors, warnings) mostly need to be displayed in the users' native language, such as French, German, or Chinese. The messages intended only for the development or support of the application may be displayed in the developers language (e.g. English).
Prior logging systems typically expose a raw logging interface to the developers, and rely on developers to properly and completely internationalize log messages. Similarly, traditional application programming interfaces (APIs) depend on the developers to localize the log messages and pass resulting strings to the logging system. If the developers fail in this task, un-localized messages may be logged and passed to the users, hindering localization. These failures can be exceedingly difficult to find and repair during the development process.